EFCC Is Nigeria’s Most Corrupt Institution – Prof Nwabueze

*Says Agency’s Lawyers Promote Graft

By Daniel Kanu

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), the agency set up to eradicate the cankerworm of corruption in Nigeria, has been described as the most corrupt institution in Nigeria today, a classic case of the hunter becoming the hunted.

Making this assertion in an exclusive interview with The Niche is Professor Ben Nwabueze, Nigeria’s foremost constitutional lawyer and anti-corruption crusader who has called for a social and ethical revolution as the only way to eradicate the malaise.

Nwabueze said President Muhammadu Buhari’s belief that he will win the war against graft with all the probes undertaken by the EFCC will remain a mirage because according to him, “The EFCC is one of the most corrupt institutions in this country.”

The erudite lawyer said those who believe, like Buhari, that the EFCC is the solution to the problem of graft in Nigeria should first find out what happened to all the money recovered from looters or realized from sale of their assets forfeited to the Federal Government.

Told that many Nigerians may not agree with his assertion, Nwabueze countered: “What happened to all the money EFCC claimed to have recovered through plea bargain? You said many people won’t agree with me? Why has Buhari sacked Ibrahim Lamorde, the former EFCC chairman? Have you looked at the report on the sale of assets of former Inspector General of Police Tafa Balogun, and former Governor of Bayelsa State Diepreye Alamieyesegha, forfeited to the Nigerian state?

Buhari Has No Capacity To Govern Nigeria – Nwabueze

*Nwabueze

*Says Jonathan, Obasanjo Promoted Corruption

By Daniel Kanu

Nigeria may not extricate itself from the woes bedeviling it soon because those at the helm of its affairs have no capacity to govern it.

This is the submission of Nigeria’s foremost Constitutional lawyer and one of the oldest Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SAN), Professor Ben Nwabueze, in an exclusive interview with The Niche.

The erudite professor of Law said Nigeria may continue to wallow in socio-economic and political wilderness because the man they elected president last year, Muhammadu Buhari, has neither the “academic nor intellectual credentials” to govern the country.

He said the election of Buhari was a big mistake, accusing Nigerians of suffering from amnesia and refusing to learn from the mistake of electing ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo 16 years ago.

In his words: “I said it at the beginning that Buhari does not have what it takes, he does not have the academic and intellectual credentials to rule Nigeria. He just went from School Certificate to the army. Does training in a military academy adequately equip anybody to govern this country, knowing what it takes, what it means to govern Nigeria? Can what you are taught in a military academy without a university background prepare you?”

Will Nigeria Survive Buhari’s Regime?

By Benjamin Obiajulu Aduba

The 9-month span of Mr. Muhammadu Buhari’s presidency is not long enough to pass final judgements on his stewardship but long enough to predict the future of Nigeria. Nigerians should start thinking whether the president has the right temperament to govern a complex country like Nigeria; whether he understands convoluted relationships between the federal government and states, between the government and citizens, between dictatorships and democracies, etc. The country should consider if the president understands the differences in the last sentence; does he have the nuances necessary to maneuver though these intricate relationships; does he have the judgement to implement his understanding; and most importantly, is he capable of carrying the whole country with him

*Buhari

A few examples would illustrate the fear for Nigeria after PMB’s administration. It is reported that last week members of the Department of state Security Services (DSS) invaded Ekiti House of Assembly and kidnapped four legislators who were in the peoples’ house doing peoples’ business (http://metrowatchonline.com/fayoses-criticism-buhari-dss-military-style-invades-ekiti-assembly-abducts-4-lawmakers/) If the report is correct there cannot be any more impunity than this. How can a federal force invade a state legislative body and forcibly remove state law makers? In Nigeria there is defined state boundaries and federal boundaries of authority. Each, sacred and sacrosanct. If some Ekiti legislators violated federal laws, they should be apprehended outside the state legislative building. I am aware that the people of Ekiti like their counterparts in Anambra have well-educated and bold citizenry who publicly express their views no matter the circumstances but that does not give DSS any right to violet the protection that their membership in the state legislature provides them. They are immune from harassment inside the building doing state duties. Anambra and Ekiti stand as the last bulwark against dictatorship from federal authorities. Anambra stood against Obasanjo’s regime just as Ekiti is standing against PMB’s.

If the alleged incidence in Ekiti is not frightening enough, consider the reported interview that Mr. President gave to Al Jazeera television. It was reported as follows

Responding to question about how he plans to deal with the issue of Biafra, Buhari said, Biafra quest is a joke he added “At least two millions Nigerians were killed in the Biafra war. And for somebody to wake up, may be they weren’t born. Looking for Biafra after two millions people were killed, they are joking with the security and Nigeria won’t tolerate Biafra.”

Beyond Ese Oruru: Naming And Shaming The Kidnap-And-Convert Villains

By Moses E. Ochonu

A quick proclamation by way of introduction: Ese Oruru, Patience Paul, and their parents are not the villains of the kidnapping and conversion of underage Christian girls in Northern Nigeria. Blaming the victim is a form of re-victimization, an exculpatory gimmick employed by those who, for reasons known only to themselves, do not want to confront or unequivocally condemn an egregious crime.

*Ese Oruru: After her traumatic experience 

More instances of abduction, forced conversion and in some cases forced marriage of underage Christian girls have now come to light since the resolution of the Ese Oruru and Patience Paul cases. Ese’s case has opened a floodgate. Many cold cases, long-stalled in the labyrinth of law enforcement and legal inaction, are now in the public domain, resurrected by parents as the press and social media have become sensitized to this menace. As of today, there is an unresolved case in Zaria, one case in Zamfara State, and four cases in Bauchi State, the details of the latter appearing in Sunday’s edition of Punch Newspaper with pictures and interviews with parents, law enforcement, and the ubiquitous Sharia Commissions.

There should be no justifying the many wrongs that have been committed against these children and their parents by overzealous religious enforcers who have placed themselves above the legal and law enforcement institutions of the country. Some of these cases, in addition to the crimes of forceful conversion of and sexual assaults on a minor, are clear cases of kidnapping, a heinous offense under our penal code. Even in the case of Yunusa and Ese, clearly a 22 year old (his own father says he is 22) cannot have sexual relations with a 14 year old under Nigerian law. It is statutory rape of a child. A 14 year old is not at the age of sexual, romantic, and marital consent, period; so enough with all the specious mitigations of this egregious crime. Enough with the defensiveness.

Those of us who lived and schooled in the Muslim-majority states of the North know that these incidents have been going on for years. They are not outliers, as some people would want us to believe. Parents and pastors have been crying about these crimes for decades but very few cases actually made it to the national press. Starved of national press attention and without the democratized discursive space of today’s social media, many such cases were never resolved in favor of the children and their parents.

Buhari's Many Failed Promises

*Buhari

By Jim Lawson Moses
When in 2015, President Muhammadu Buhari, PMB, won the Presidential election after a keen contest with the then incumbent President, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, most Nigerians were happy thinking that the 'messiah' that will take Nigerians from the woods to the 'Promised Land' had come. Many, also jubilated with the firm belief that the ''change'' which he and his Party, the All Progressives Congress, APC, promised Nigerians was certainly going to transform Nigeria.

But with just about 100 days to the end of his first year in office, PMB is still apportioning blames rather than proffering solutions. Rather than shop for those that will help him fix the nation's bleeding economy, President Buhari is busy globetrotting; spending the little resources that Nigeria is left with abroad and returning back home with little or no results for his missions abroad.

I am calling for the humble resignation of Mr. President because of the following obvious reasons:

Failed Promises
During the 2015 presidential electioneering campaigns, PMB, promised to make the Naira equivalent to the United States of America Dollar. With this pronouncement, most of us where happy since our economy is an import dependent one. As at May 29, 2015, when he assumed office, the value of the Naira to the Dollar, in the black market was N195.00 against its current rate of N385.00. As a result of this, cost of almost every commodity in the market has skyrocketed.

How Rich Are The Rich In Nigeria?

By Dan Amor

I think it was John Paul Getty, the American-born British billionaire, philanthropist and heir to oil industry fortune, who quipped, when asked how rich he was, 'No one is really rich if he can count his money.' In Getty's day, anyone with one million British pounds ( or even one million dollars) was rated as 'rich' and anyone with more than five million pounds was 'very rich'. Above that and you were in the 'super rich' category, and when you got above the fifty million pounds level, you rated as a 'can't count'. 

President Buhari and Vice-President Osinbajo 

Nelson Bunker Hunt, who with his brother inherited a fortune even greater than Getty's, was a 'can't count' man before he tried to corner the silver market. Asked by a Senate Committee how much he was worth, he snapped, 'Hell, if I knew that, I wouldn't be worth very much'. In the United States, for many years Forbes Magazine and Fortune, among others, have published lists of the very wealthy which have been eagerly awaited events in a society where wealth is a macho symbol, to be boasted about rather than hidden. In Great Britain, however, wealth is something best not talked about, and it has never been easy to establish authoritatively just who owns what, and what they are worth. Most of the stupendous wealth in Britain as in Nigeria, had been shrouded in secrecy.

Yet, in 1989, the Sunday Times of London broke with tradition by publishing the first real guide to Britain's wealthy, causing a considerable amount of unease among those who hated being on it. In 1990, the Sunday Times repeated the exercise, adding a further 70 names to the list and raising the stake to £70 million. Both the 1989 and 1990 lists which occupied most of one entire colour magazine, have since been widely discussed and copied by the rest of Fleet Street. They have also been used as ammunition by both sides of the Old Britain versus New Britain, quoted on the one hand to show how even in the Thatcher years old money had reinforced its power, and on the other hand, to record the rise and rise of the new rich at the expense of the old in Britain. 

When the Sunday Times published the first list in 1989, the paper commented editorially on its own study, mourning the fact that, after a decade of Thatcherism, old money still dominated and paternalism appeared to be making a comeback. Others, of course, took an entirely different view of the list, expressing astonishment at the amount of new money, at the relative decline of old wealth, and the degree of egalitarianism which had crept in. It generated a debate which still goes on more than two decades after the publication.

Foreign Portfolio Investors Are Plundering Africa

                                                                                                           (pix: mgafrica)

By Farouk Martins Aresa
If you have your own resources like gold, diamond or oil that brings steady income, why gamble for leverage? Businesses have a good reason for using Other People’s Money OPM to establish and split the profit with risk takers on the long run. If the business fails, owner of the business is protected from personal liability and shareholders also absorbed a loss. In case of governments, Africa’s liability multiplies since countries do not fold, even when they defaults on odious loans.

It is well known that the advantage of stocks and bonds as part of financial portfolio has its gain in long-term profits. This is where capitals are raised for most projects with the hope that the project would produce gain for the investors on the long run. The only beneficiaries of short-term trade, acquisition and corporate raiders are funds managers and black knights in hostile take-over. They now descend on African countries, to make quick cash or profit in Nigeria.

Politicians send loot out while our domiciliary foreign cash account gamble in devalued naira. Dollar account and loot cannot enhance local development. Instead of relying on whatever we have by making sure our foreign reserve is not drained by foreign portfolio investors, we place faith on FPI intention. It’s pennywise pound-foolish to stake foreign income as collateral loan.

Unfortunately, each time these foreign portfolio investment fund managers pull their money out of stocks and bonds at a convenient and opportune time, the government of the day is blamed for bad economic policy driving foreign investors away. In the first place, they are not in our countries for local interest and their local partners furnish them inside information on our policies. Foreign ratting agencies look after the interest of their partners, not local beneficiaries.

Foreign portfolio investors have gravitated towards funds manager seeking their interest for maximum profits around the world. While this is a legitimate pursuit to increase shareholders’ return on investment, it devastates poor African countries trying to get on their feet by seeking long-term investments for infrastructures and capital projects. It could be a win-win situation if the foreign investors do not seek short-term gain at the expense of their hosts.

Can Trump Beat Clinton?

*Donald Trump, Hillary and Bill Clinton (pix:abc)

After all of the ink and pixels spilled on 2016 election coverage, Super Tuesday confirmed what the polls have been telling us for months: We are headed for a clash of the titans between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. 

And if the numbers hold true again, it appears Trump will have an uphill, though not insurmountable, climb to best Clinton, and there’s a chance he could wind up one of the biggest losers in presidential history. Or become President Trump. 

Nobody thought he could win the Republican nomination either, and he might just be getting warmed up. 

“I haven’t even started with her,” the mogul said of Clinton in the last GOP debate. So what might it look like when he does and the Trump-branded wrecking ball hits the Democratic Party establishment? 
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Ese Oruru Affair: Power Without Responsibility

By Louis Odion, FNGE
Though isolated, the recent budget-padding comedy in Abuja and lately the Ese scandal in Kano invariably underscore one acute elite affliction in contemporary Nigeria: an obsession to exercise power and the unwillingness to bear its responsibility. 

The pathology is what manifests today whenever President Buhari goes about issuing threat to deal ruthlessly with the "budget mafia" believed to have sexed up figures in the 2016 appropriation bill in view of the dust raised at the National Assembly. But a more honest response should have been an acceptance of responsibility ab initio by Mr. president on whose desk the buck stops. 

*Ese Oruru

Apparently following their principal's odd footsteps, ministers have, in turn, made a huge theatre of publicly disowning the numbers ascribed to their respective ministries, departments and agencies as if vetting the figures was not part of their briefs as CEOs of the MDAs to begin with. Health minister, for instance, swore "budget rats" ate up the documents he originally submitted. No one is ready to defend the allocation of N3.87b for capital projects at the Abuja State House Clinic while all the nation's teaching hospitals individually got peanuts. Or why a whopping N576m was earmarked for the construction of the residences of the Vice President's ADC and CSO among other outlandish entries. 

Taken together, the impression thus created is that whereas the government is exhorting the citizens with evangelical fervor to tighten their belts for an exceedingly lean year ahead, its own hierarchs are ironically busy loosening theirs to take more fat in their mid-sections. Not surprising, various conspiracy theories have since been mushrooming around the budget fiasco. Perhaps the most outlandish is the suggestion that the whistle was blown at the Senate by forces sympathetic to the embattled Bukola Saraki as a fight-back over his unfinished business at the Code of Conduct Tribunal. 

If true, that only begs the issue. In case the Buhari handlers don't know, they should be enlightened that the signature the president appended to the document before its presentation to the National Assembly on December 22, 2015 is tantamount to a proof of ownership and, therefore, a provisional claim of responsibility. Much more compelling is the obligation to admit that the seed of the present scandal was inadvertently sown with the inexplicable delay in constituting the federal cabinet last year. 

Hence, the initiative was inadvertently ceded to bureaucrats who, from experience, are hardly any different from buccaneers. In fact, Buhari unwittingly handed them the rope to hang him the very moment he announced in faraway France that civil servants were "the ones doing the real work" while ministers were mere "noise-makers", in response to then growing public apprehension over the delay in raising the federal cabinet. 

Ese's Abduction: Emir Sanusi Has A Case To Answer

By Femi Fani-Kayode

All those that are attempting to distort the narrative about the tragic plight of Miss Ese Oruru are evil and we commit them to God’s judgement. The facts are as follows. She is 14 years old and not 18, and she was abducted from her home. She did not leave her home freely or of her own volition. She was cruelly and wickedly carried away and stolen from her parents, family and loved ones and forcefully taken by complete strangers to a distant land that she had never been before on the other side of the country.

*Sultan of Sokoto, Muhammadu Sa'adu Abubakar III and Emir of Kano, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi

This is not a love story about two inseparable young people: it is a story about pedophilia, child abduction, kidnapping, human trafficking, slavery, rape, impunity, wickedness and ritual sex, and Emir Sanusi Lamido Sanusi has a case to answer. That little girl has been raped over and over again and she may well have AIDS, VVF or some other strange sexual disease by now.

Instead of sympathising with her and considering the fact that she may never be the same again in view of the physical and mental torture and trauma that she has suffered over the last few months, some misguided souls and shameless commentators have the temerity to come to social media and say that she was old enough to “get it”, whilst others say that she “loved it” and “wanted it”. I am utterly disgusted and appalled by these sentiments. Where is the humanity of those that speak and think like this? Where is their compassion and where is their soul?

May God judge them and may their own infant daughters be abducted, forcefully Islamised, raped, enslaved and kept against their will as a sex slaves in an Emir’s palace in the same way that Ese was.

Lechers And Child-Brides

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

ON any occasion when the facade of sophistication  and sensitivity to the needs of their fellow citizens crashes, our leaders are often  revealed as  a people who are scandalously ensconced in a notion of self-importance that negates the humanity of those outside the circle of their socio-political and pecuniary influence.  It is because they are deluded by this warped notion that they do not mind neglecting the poor citizens to wallow in their abject misery or deliberately inflicting on them policies that would seal their pulverisation and reify their overbearing sense of importance. 

*Ese Oruru - The Victim 

This is why our leaders steal the money meant for the improvement of the lot of the people, divert  the funds meant for buying weapons and yet send soldiers to the battlefield unarmed. But the citizens still appreciate the true worth of the life of the average Nigerian. This was demonstrated in the past few days by the outrage they expressed at the abduction of the Bayelsa girl, Ese Oruru, who was forcibly Islamised and married at the age of 13.

This outrage did not come from the leaders of the society who were complicit in the ordeal of the teenager.  It came from those outside the realm of power. And without this, those who had the power to set Ese free from captivity would not have bulged.  But  since there is  apparently  official complicity in the ordeal of  the minor, there is  the danger that beyond the outrage that has led to her release,  the culprits  would not be punished . 

And there is a worse danger in so far as a lack of punishment would spawn a recurrence of this aberration. For the case of Yunusa is only a grim upshot of the failure of similar acts of impunity in the past to tug the conscience of the nation and pave the way for appropriate sanctions.  If the Yunusas of our society are not merely serving as minions for some privileged persons, they have only demonstrated that they have learnt enough to appropriate for themselves an art their masters have deployed to satiate their lecherous appetites.

Why Biafra Is Giving President Buhari A Headache

*Kanu

"Dressed all in white, Nnamdi Kanu took his seat in the Federal High Court in Abuja, Nigeria, on February 9. Though he had been in detention for almost four months, the 48-year-old activist initially declined requests from court officers to agree to have his handcuffs removed. In an act of defiance, he raised his cuffed hands to the television cameras. It was hard to divine his intention, but the act and his angry expression suggested that he barely recognized the authority of the court he found himself in. Kanu, a dual British-Nigerian citizen, was arrested in Lagos in October by Nigerian intelligence agents during a visit from his home in London. Kanu leads the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB)...”

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Onyeka Onwenu: Another Case Of 'That Ibo Woman'!

By Chuks Iloegbunam

Onyeka Onwenu was, on September 13, 2013, appointed the Director General of the National Center for Women Development (NCWD) by the Jonathan admin­istration. The all-changing Buhari government relieved her of the position last month.

 

*Onyeka Onwenu

On her ten­ure, she claimed thus in an open letter: “I served for two years and five months and did my best under very difficult conditions. We hard­ly had money to operate and the place was badly run down. Worst, there was low moral and lack of commitment among the staff. Most spent the day loitering and gossiping. Many would not show up for work or arrive 11 am, only to leave before 3 pm. Some were absent for months and were just collecting their salary at home. My administration changed all that. Most staff were turned around and became passionate about the work, appreciating also the changes they thought were not possible but were happening right before them.”

Is she correct? The answer would seem to be positive because, nearly two weeks after the claim, no voice has controverted her. This should cause botheration in conscientious quarters because she protests that her sterling service to the country was repaid with the objectionable coins of injustice: “There remained, though, a rem­nant who felt that the Center was their personal preserve and that the position of Director General should only go to someone from their part of the country. I was ini­tially dismissed as just a musician. When that did not work, I was tar­geted and abused for being an Igbo woman who came to give jobs to and elevate my people while side­lining them. When these detrac­tors could not provide answers to the spate of improvements we were bringing, they resorted to sabotage and blackmail. The first such salvo was fired when a Senate Commit­tee visited on an oversight mission a few months after my arrival. All three Generators at the Center were cannibalized, overnight, just hours to the visit.”

Onyeka stated in her open letter that, to begin with, she hadn’t lob­bied to be appointed DG-NCWD. Nor was she ever minded to grovel in order to retain the post. Once word arrived from above that she had had her day at the Center, she made to leave. “But some people were going to exact their pound of flesh. They organized some staff, mostly Northerners, invited the Press and set about to disgrace themselves. By mid-afternoon, while the Heads of Departments were putting together the hando­ver notes, they seized the keys to my official car, even with my per­sonal items still inside. Threats be­gan to fly. ‘That Ibo woman must’, ‘We will disgrace her.’ Their chief organizer, the Acting DG, went about whipping up ethnic senti­ments against me. Late 2015, the same officer had gone to the Cent­er’s mosque to ask for the issue of a Fatwa against me, claiming that I was working against the inter­est of the North. We nipped that in the bud by calling a town hall meeting and asking that proof be provided. The Fatwa was denied and peace reigned for a while. Po­lice was called in to the Center to escort me out and avoid bloodshed as I disengaged. Eventually, in the midst of insults and name calling, with an angry baying crowd, some of whom were brought in from outside, I entered my official car and left.” 

Buhari, APC Duped Nigerians - Fayose

APC Leaders: Tinubu, Buhari and Oyegun 

Ekiti State Governor, Mr Ayodele Fayose, has said that President Muhammadu Buhari and his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), duped Nigerians by obtaining their votes by trick, declaring that; “Everything Buhari and his party promised Nigerians when they were looking for votes, they have denied and it won’t be a surprise if one day, Buhari comes out to even deny that he was elected on the platform of APC.”

The governor described Buhari’s declaration that he would not pay the N5, 000 stipend he promised to unemployed youths in the country and Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed’s claim that creation of three million jobs per year was not promised by the APC as the peak of political 419 that the President and his party represent.

He said; “They have not fulfilled any of the promises they made to Nigerians. In fact, they have even told us that they never made any promise. It is close to one year that Buhari assumed office; no single job has been created. Instead of the three million jobs per year that they promised, what we have been witnessing is job losses, economic hardship and budget padding”

Speaking through his Special Assistant on Public Communications and New Media, Lere Olayinka, Governor Fayose said it was more worrisome that President Buhari always choses foreign lands to make major policy pronouncements, asking whether Buhari has turned himself to Nigeria’s Diaspora or Online President. 

Unbelievable: Cut-Off Points Into Federal Unity Colleges In Nigeria

Imo -138;Yobe -2;Zamfra 4

Abia – Male(130) Female(130)

Adamawa – Male(62) Female(62)
Akwa-Ibom – Male(123) Female(123)
Anambra – Male(139) Female(139)
Bauchi – Male(35) Female(35)
Bayelsa – Male(72) Female(72)
Benue – Male(111) Female(111)
Borno – Male(45) Female(45)
Cross-Rivers – Male(97) Female(97)
Delta – Male(131) Female(131)
Ebonyi – Male(112) Female(112)
Edo – Male(127) Female(127)
Ekiti – Male(119) Female(119)
Enugu – Male(134) Female(134)
Gombe – Male(58) Female(58)
Imo – Male(138) Female(138)
Jigawa – Male(44) Female(44)
Kaduna – Male(91) Female (91)
Kano – Male(67) Female(67)
Kastina – Male(60) Female(60)
Kebbi – Male(9) Female(20)
Kogi – Male(119) Female(119)
Kwara – Male(123) Female(123)
Lagos – Male(133) Female(133)
Nassarawa – Male(58) Female(58)
Niger – Male(93) Female(93)
Ogun – Male(131) Female(131)
Ondo – Male(126) Female(126)
Osun – Male(127) Female(127)
Oyo – Male(127) Female(127)
Plateau – Male(97) Female(97)
Rivers – Male(118) Female(118)
Sokoto – Male(9) Female(13)
Taraba – Male(3) Female(11)
Yobe – Male(2) Female(27)
Zamfara – Male(4) Female(2)
FCT Abuja – Male(90) Female(90)

Patrice Lumumba: An Amazing Story

Malcolm X called him the most impressive black man ever to walk the African continent. Just six months after becoming the first prime minister of the newly independent Republic of the Congo (later called the Democratic Republic of the Congo), and two days before John F. Kennedy’s inauguration in January 1961, Patrice Lumumba was shot down by a firing squad. But Lumumba’s surprising path and sudden death serve as a powerful reminder that for political leaders in many parts of the world, true reform has only one major prerequisite: survival.

Few countries today are as troubled as the Congo, a land of 68 million nestled near the center of sub-Saharan Africa. Belgian invaders looted the country for almost a century, during perhaps the most brutal colonization in Africa. But Congo, rich in mineral resources like rubber, was once poised to be an African success story, thanks in no small part to the man his people called by one name: Lumumba.

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A Dying Nation, Its Travelling President And The Lying Party

By Jude Ndukwe
In the run up to the 2015 presidential election, leaders and members of All Prgressives Congress (APC) were very vocal in condemning the then president of the country, President Goodluck Jonathan, for every step he took. This even included attending churches on Sunday, Jonathan's religion's holy day of obligation. 

*Buhari

It was Babatunde Raji Fashola, the then governor of Lagos State and now Honourable Minister of Power, Works and Housing, that succinctly captured the mind of the APC leaders and supporters then when at the sixth Bola Tinubu Colloquium in Lagos some time in March 2014, he charged at his listeners by asking them if they wanted “someone who spends most of his time in church or mosque, or the man who is ready to spend his time on the job.” That was when life was very sweet as an opposition party especially with the tolerance level of Goodluck Jonathan. At least, Goodluck was spending his time in the country even if, in the hyperbolic words of Fashola, he was spending “most” of it in church.

However, fast forward to today, we have the same Fashola who is currently serving as a minister under president Muhammadu Buhari who would remain Nigeria's most travelled president for a long time in our history. So far, since his inauguration into office on May 29, 2015, President Buhari has traversed 24 countries of the world within a short period of 9 months.

Considering our scarce resources, this is too frequent, too costly and is a disturbing development as the nation is in its worst economic quagmire since independence. Never in the history of our nation even when we thought we faced economic recession and hyper-inflation has our exchange rate run on auto-devaluation as it is now. The prices of food stuff and basic items are climbing higher and out of the reach of the common man. The purchasing power of the citizens has been badly eroded while people are not only not getting employed, those who are employed are losing their jobs in droves.

The economy is at a standstill! No gainful economic activity going on anywhere. Infrastructural development that characterised Goodluck Jonathan's administration has since been brought to a halt; our revived agricultural sector is now in a speedy reverse course. While harmless and armless youths protesting peacefully within their constitutional rights are regularly mowed down by mindless security agencies in Zaria, Aba, Onitsha etc, the supreme court has come under several severe attacks from the ruling party as the Honourable Justices of the apex court have resisted the “body language” charm and refused to do the bidding of the party in some of the judgements given by the court recently. Kidnapping has not only returned but assumed a more dangerous and fearful dimension, and the security agents seem overwhelmed.

State Of The Nigerian Economy

By Nebo Ike
When the decisions of the apex court on the 2015 election petitions, in which the ruling party (PDP) got badly wounded was announced, an air of succor came to the party when Govs Wike of Rivers State, Darius Ishiaku of Taraba State, Dr. Okezie Ikpeazu of Abia State, Admiral Murtala Nyako (rtd) of Adamawa State, Udom Emmanuel of Akwa Ibom State, and Senator David Mark of Benue South retained their seats.

*President Buhari with VP Osinbajo and
Finance Minister Mrs. Kemi Adeosun

Just about the same time its spokesperson Chief Olisa Metuh regained his constitutional freedom. Following simultaneously was PDP NEC meeting that saw Senator Alli Modi Sheriff as chairman, confirming the speculation that the party is bouncing high. However, the state of the economy worried PDP Think-Tank more than the allegation that its new national chairman was an imposition.

Legislation is one of the enabling environments for the rule of law, order, investment and good governance to flourish in any economy. There is no dearth of such laws in Nigeria. However, the economy does not look like one that benefit from those laws. Rather there is extreme poverty, hard times in the land and lack of commensurate growth showed by the economy. There is always scarcity of basic commodities needed by average citizens like kerosene, food items, communal facilities (Good network of road, Health and Education). Why do we have government from independence to 2016 that failed to deliver these basic infrastructures when government is a continuation of each previous one?

The situation on ground shows that no value is being added by successive government from 1973 when a Naira exchanged for more than a dollar, to now when almost N400.00 fetch only a dollar. It is clear that the productive sectors of any economy expand or contract its Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The way successive governments have handled the economy gave rise to the present state where ghost workers syndrome has become a strangulating factor. Successful and buoyant economies are not a product of its GDP alone, but also as a result of legal protection of institutions and processes.

Extra Judicial Killings Of Igbo Youths By Nigerian Soldiers

By E O Eke

The lifeless and desecrated bodies of another batch of Igbo youth murdered by Nigerian soldiers on February 9, 2016 at National High School Aba, is another gruesome reminder of the brutality and high handedness with which the Buhari administration is addressing the non-violent protests by youths agitating for independent state of Biafra. When you view the recent massacre against the background that the victims were unarmed, were not violent and the crime was perpetrated by soldiers and police men from Northern  Nigeria, the significance and intention of the government becomes ominous. The use of disproportionate force and introduction of sectarian dimension raises serious concerns about the future of Nigeria

As the death toll of this unjustifiable pogrom rise, the silence of Igbo leaders is deafening. Why have Igbo leaders in position to reach out both to the government and protesters kept quiet? Is Nigeria is really a secular democracy? Has the governors, senators, members of the house of assembly and other elected politicians any real power to implement the will of the people and give hope to their wishes and aspirations? Are they aware of the Huge responsibility they carry on behalf of the people?

I am asking, how much more evil, bloodshed brutality and injustice do Nigerians want to see, before we act to stop this crime against humanity going in Igboland. The actions of the army is unconscionable. It is even more curious that the government withdrew soldiers fighting terrorists to murder non-violent protesters. The pictures of the atrocities are as nauseating as they are condemnable. They show the depravity of the minds behind them. It is difficult to imagine that the men responsible for these crimes have human conscience and what it takes to bear arms on behalf of a state.

There are neither reasons no justification for this massacre. It is even more disturbing that this is coming after we heard that President Muhammadu Buhari withdrew soldiers fighting Boko Haram and told them to go and deal with non-violent protesters in Igboland. It is happening as the president releases Boko Haram terrorists and Fulani herdsmen terrorising the country unchallenged.

(Army Frees 275 Boko Haram Suspects From Prison Friday, February 12, 2016)

Multiculturalism And The Igbo Identity

By Dan Amor
I would have loved to title our column this week, 'Buhari And The Igbo Question', but in order not to reduce this very important issue to mere verbalism by those who read banal political expediency into all serious issues, I plead that we settle for the above title.

*President Buhari 

 Multiculturalism has been the subject of cover stories of most international magazines including Time and Newsweek, as well as numerous articles in newspapers and magazines across the world. It has sparked heated jeremiads by leading American columnists such as George Will, Dinesh D'Sousa, and Roger Kimball. It moved William F. Buckley to rail against Stanley Fish and Catherine Stimpson  on "Firing Line." 

It is arguably the most hotly debated topic in the civilised world today – and justly so. For whether one speaks of tensions between Hasidim and African-Americans in Crown Heights, or violent mass protests against Moscow in ethnic republics such as Armenia, or outright war between Serbs and Croats in Yugoslavia, it is clear that the clash of cultures is a worldwide problem, deeply felt, passionately expressed, always on the verge of violent explosion. Problems of this magnitude inevitably frame the discussion of multiculturalism and cultural diversity even among leading intellectuals across the world. Yet, it is unfortunate that, in Nigeria, the vexed issues of racism, nationalism and cultural identity are downplayed by our commentators and analysts because some think that they and their tribes are not directly affected.

Few commentators could have predicted that one of the issues that dominated academic and popular discourse in the final decade of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century – concomitant with the fall of apartheid in South Africa, communism in Russia, and the subsequent dissolution of the Soviet Union – would be the matter of cultural pluralism in our secondary school and university curricula and its relation to the "Nigerian" national identity. Repeated experience and routine violations of the rights of minorities and the Igbo nation in Nigeria attest to the urgency of the scattered, and often confused, debates over what is variously known as cultural diversity, cultural pluralism, or multiculturalism. 

The greatest threat to the string that binds us together as a nation of diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds and its social intercourse is not nationalistic cultural passions but our collective failure to discuss our differences and the arrogant manifestation of messianic impudence by our rulers who think that they possess the sole authority to dictate what should be talked about and what not to discuss in our country. Increasing incidents of violence are associated with ethnic differences in very many places in the world: Koreans and African-Americans in Flatbush, Brooklyn; Zulus and Xhosas in South Africa; Poles and Gypsies in Poland; the Tutsis and Hutu in Rwanda; the Hausa/Fulani and Igbo in Nigeria; and, of course, the fate of the Jews in Ethiopia and in the old Soviet Union.